Make Marketing Suck Less

3 Phases of Building Your Speaking Business the Rebel Way

There's a lot of advice, courses, and information about how to grow your speaking business.

From how to market yourself as a speaker to how to land paid speaking gigs. And everything in between.

There's a lot of information and it can be overwhelming. In fact, you can feel like you're drinking out of a fire hose.

What should you work on first? Marketing your speech? Your video reel? All of it? How do you know what to focus on and when?                                            

I've noticed when I've had strategy sessions with up and coming speakers and established speakers, they don’t know where to focus on making their speaking business grow.

Today, I am going to walk you through the three stages of growing a successful speaking business and what you should focus on in each stage.

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Phase One: The Start-Up Phase of Your Speaking Business

The first stage of growing a speaking business is the start-up phase. During this phase, you want to be focusing on two different aspects of your speaking business. The first is creating that signature talk that will be your next best-selling product and the second is selling that talk – and believe me, you want to be focusing on selling well before you think you're “ready.”    

In my book Speak for Impact, I talk about writing a minimal, viable presentation. This is the presentation you are going to start selling right out of that gate. So, when you are starting out, you have to write that signature talk for a very specific audience.

One of the big stumbling blocks that I see with speakers who are in this start-up space is that they don't know who the audience is for their message. They have a vague concept like, “I want to speak to women between the ages of 30 and 50.”  

That's definitely not specific enough. Where are these women hanging out? What are they doing? Are they raising kids? Are they single and looking for love? Who are these people and where are you going to find them?

Once you've identified the audience that you want to reach with your message, you can then start writing that minimal, viable presentation. When I work with people, whether it's one-on-one or in the Rebel Speaker Accelerator, we do the strategy portion of the speaking business first and then we launch to pitching because the sooner you start pitching, the sooner you will get out there and be speaking.

This is why if you're in the start-up phase, the second part that you want to focus on is your sales process.  This includes finding places to pitch your talk, setting your fee, (especially if you want to get paid to speak instead of just getting clients into your business,) and deciding on your negotiation strategy.             

My best piece of advice is to start pitching before you feel ready. If you want help with pitching I have a free five-day kickstart called, Get the Speech, Get the Gig. We'll have you up and running and selling your speech in just five days.

So, at this point in time, you're in the start-up, work on the product that you're selling, (your speech) and work on how to sell it. Nothing else matters.    

Phase Two: The Gaining Momentum 

The second phase of growing your speaking business is the gaining momentum phase., This is when you've started to book speaking gigs. You're looking at your pipeline and you have leads for places where you want to be speaking. You're sending out applications or you are pitching regularly and you're beginning to get speaking gigs and get paid for them.

Now, while you're in this gaining momentum phase, it's important to keep your eye on sales. You should always be asking for referrals and testimonials every time you speak. You should also be obsessively tweaking your product/speech to make it better.          

Also, in the gaining momentum phase, you can start working on your marketing and your platform building. A lot is made about speaker marketing and so many speakers feel like it's important to have all of their marketing in place before they start pitching and that is just backward. Start pitching, start getting gigs, then you can invest in your marketing.

When you are ready to start investing, The number one item you want to start investing in is a video of you speaking. There is nothing more important than having a sizzle reel, or a three-minute clip that is well produced, of your speaking on your website. This is what you can send people to because that is what is going to give them a taste of what you can do on stage and the results that you deliver.

After that, think putting together a pretty kick-ass speaking page on your website. You can think about doing a speaker's one-sheet. I always have very mixed feelings about a speaker one sheet because people are like, “You must have one.”

I have one and I have never sent it out.  If you were doing any cold pitching do not send your speaker's one-sheet as an attachment because that gets caught up in people's spam filter so just be aware. I'm a little like, “Yeah, you should have one, but it's not a big priority for you.”

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So, those are some of the marking things that you want to be working on as your speaking business gains momentum. Then you can also focus on platform building. This means building up your social media presence, your following, and your thought leadership.

This is a good time to start thinking about doing some public relations outreach.  Next week on the Rebel Speaker we're going to have a guest expert in PR – Brigette Lyons! PR is essentially getting you media placements so that you are seen as an expert in your area. Not only on the stage but in the media as well.   

Once you've started getting a few speaking gigs, you can really focus on the platform building side. So, marketing and platform.

Phase Three: Steady Growth

All right. You're gaining momentum and now things are going well. Your business is starting to thrive and it's humming along. Your pipeline in full. You have lots of leads for speaking gigs. You're getting referrals. You're getting paid. Your marketing is in place so now you are in what I call the steady growth phase and it is time to optimize your speaking business.

The goal here is that when things are humming along well, you want to start thinking about how can you make your speaking business work even better for you. For some people, the goal here is to be charging more per gig or getting bigger speaking packages, so maybe it's the keynote speech plus a workshop when you go to an advent.

You also might be thinking about how you can start speaking at more prestigious places. While you're in the optimization phase, some of the things you want to be thinking about are number one, are your fees set appropriately? It is so tempting for speakers just to take what they can get.  I've talked to a few speakers who are in this steady growth phase who still don't have a set fee that they're going after every time they speak. They're still kind of taking what they can get because they don't want to negotiate.  

At this stage, it’s important to think about your fees. Do they need to increase? Are you leaving money on the table? Should you be offering a package of a keynote speech and a workshop that goes along with it or maybe coaching to follow up with your keynote speech? How can you be putting together more lucrative packages? Think about where you are leaving money on the table and what can you do to fix it?                   

Another area to look at while in this stage of steady growth is: Is your speech converting into more gigs? I always say that the sign of a successful speech is that you're asked to speak at other organizations right after the gig. So, it's important for your pipeline to make sure that you are getting other gigs every time you speak and if you're not getting as many as you want, it's time to go back to the speech and look at it and think about where can I optimize? Do I need to tighten up my story? Do I need to tighten up the message? Do I need to tighten up my delivery?  If so, how can you fix that?                 

Another area to focus on is: Is your pitching effective? What could you be doing differently to convert more people?  This could even be talking about your negotiation strategy. How can you be doing it better and differently?                      

You also need to start considering at this stage if it makes sense for you to be doing the research for speaking gigs and the pitching of speaking gigs yourself or is it now time to outsource that so you can focus on what matters in your business, which is delivering the craft and having those sales conversations and negotiating your fee. So, think about, can I bring someone in?

Finally, it’s time to ask yourself, “Hey, am I enjoying this? Do I like the speaking lifestyle that I've created?” I recently read a blog post by Jason Connell who talks about why he left the speaking industry after being wildly successful.  The real reason was he burned himself out because his speaking didn't match the lifestyle that he wanted to have.Don't let that happen to you. Always be asking yourself, “Is my speaking business working for me the way I want it to?”                        

If not, “What do I have to do to change it?”                         

Constant improvement is what will make your speaking business thrive, but never lose sight of the sales process, even in this stage where you feel like you are humming along. It is easy to take your focus off of the sales and what the pipeline looks like and put all your energy into optimizing all of these little moving parts.  Just always make sure that your pipeline is healthy because I don't want you to wake up one day and realize, “Holy crap. I've got nothing booked and nothing in the pipeline. I have to start over. Crap.”                     

Instead, always keep your eye on the sales. The big take-away here is to focus on where you are right now in your business. If you're just starting out, focus on your signature talk and sales. If you're gaining momentum, you can start focusing on marketing and platform building efforts, and if you're speaking business is thriving then optimizing it is where you want to put your attention.

If you want to create an action plan for how to make this happen in your business, you can apply for a Speak for Impact strategy session with me and we will develop a plan for what you should focus on and how I can help you.                        

Remember, trying to do all the things while building your speaking business or growing your speaking business is going to keep you stuck. Focus on what matters most for your speaking business right now to experience growth.